#3 VIETNAMESE HOTPOT: A DELICIOUS 'HOW TO' GUIDE

Hotpot: a meal for all the family

One of the great things about hotpots is that you can have it every day and it will still be as interesting and delicious as the first day. We are just entering the summer months in Vietnam and hotpots are still popular all year round, although people mainly have them in the winter. Hotpots are a great meal for all of the family, therefore, they are essential to any household cook during this COVID-19 epidemic, whereby people have to spend more time at home.

Hotpot is very popular in Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, China, Korea. We eat hotpot here much more than people in the West. I can’t tell how many types of hotpot we have in Vietnam. If you think of how many meats we have, then youll get the idea of how many potential hotpot dishes there may be. For example beef; beef and pork ribs; chicken; beef and chicken; seafood; frog; mud crab; duck; fish; mushroom hotpot. The list is endless.

Today I am going to show you how to cook beef and chicken hotpot. Trust me, it’s very simple and easy to make.

Let’s get started!

Today I am going cook for 2 people, if you want to cook for more people, you can just tinker with the quantity of ingredients add more.

Ingredients:

500g short plate beef.
A half of a chicken
A bunch of morning glory vegetables
A bunch of green cabbage vegetables
3 tomato
3 pieces of lemongrass
1 ginger
1 package of mushroom
Hảo hảo, grass noodle.
Aji-quick Thái hotpot seasoning

All ingredients were bought in Vinmart in Syrena shopping center, 51 Xuân Diệu. They have everything, apart from chicken as my mother gave me one of her own chickens. She really does have the best chicken. They may be tiny but they are flavoursome. Great for this type of meal.

Step 1: Prepare ingredients

Short plate beef: I bought frozen short plate beef in Vinmart. Defrost it first. You can use different types of beef but I like how thin and soft it is, so I used short plate beef. Cooks fast too which is a huge benefit.

Chicken: I used our Vietnamese native chicken, we call it “gà ta” in Vietnamese. Gà ta is a chicken which is small and the skin is yellowish and very flavoursome. You will need to wash it then chop it to small pieces.

Vegetables: You can choose whatever you want, people may use morning glory, cabbage, green cabbage, Chinese cabbage, malabar spinach, etc.

Tomato: wash and cut it into small pieces.

Lemongrass: wash and cut into 5cm strips

Ginger: wash it carefully and chop into thin slices.

Mushroom: wash it quickly and let it dry.

Step 2: Make hotpot stock

Boil about 1.5 – 2 litter of water for the stock. Put chicken wings or chicken bone parts into the pot and cook it for about 20 minutes. In this step, you can exchange the chicken for pig bone instead. Some people boil cabbage turnip and broccoli because it has a light taste and still adds a lot of flavour.
After 20 minutes, put Aji-quick Thai hotpot seasoning in to the stock. Don’t put too much if you don’t want it to be too spicy. I just used a half of it. Then put lemongrass, ginger and tomato in. Cook for a further 25m on a low heat. If you can’t find this seasoning you can use Tom Yum paste, vegan seasoning, kim chi paste depends on what taste you like. But you can usually find hotpot seasoning in supermarkets.
After this remove the bone from the pan and the stock is done and full of flavor.

Step 3: Feast Time

Ting ting, and here is the result.

And now, it’s time for you to sit down and relax. The hard bit is done. Put some chicken and mushroom in there to cook. Add some noodles or morning glory. Wait for them to cook et voila, c’est magnifique. In the meanwhile, you can open a Corona beer (topical) with your friend and… CHEERS.